


ectoplasm is thicker than blood

by astridianmayfly



Series: Ectober 2019 [3]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ectober (Danny Phantom), Ectober 2019 (Danny Phantom), Gen, HE IS FOURTEEN, I feel so bad for Danny lol, LET DANNY FUCKING CRY OK, Mild Gore, This is so sad idk why, Whump, ectober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 11:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astridianmayfly/pseuds/astridianmayfly
Summary: Jazz would do anything for Danny.





	ectoplasm is thicker than blood

**Author's Note:**

> Ectober Day #3: Electricity

Danny phases through the window, hovering a few inches off of his bedroom floor before allowing gravity to command him. His eyes widen slightly as his weight causes the hardwood to creak. Jazz looks to the floor and remembers that being a Fenton means every settlement of the house is a  **GHOST!** and her heart breaks for him.  _ What’s it like to live with that constant fear?  _ she imagines herself asking him across a desk, like a psychiatrist to a patient.  _ Dr. Jasmine Fenton. Accomplished and worthy. _

But today she was just Jazz, Danny’s older sister. 

“What  _ happened _ ?”

Danny startled. “Jazz. I didn’t see you there.”

Her little brother looked burnt around the edges. His silver-white hair was dirty, white gloves covered in soot. A joke about sweeping chimneys bubbles in her throat before Jazz notices his line of eyesight.

_ “Danny!” _

“‘m  _ fine _ , Jazz” he mumbles, but Jazz can’t help but stare, horrified.

Danny was covered in what Jazz assumes is ectoplasm. She’s been covered the substance before and had seen it mold the forms of various amorphous ghosts as much as the next daughter of ghost hunters, but this pulsed and looked like radioactive, green blood. 

“Is--is that yours?” As she asks the question, she realizes that it _ is.  _ The ectoplasm runs from a large cut on Danny’s forearm. Jazz notices bits of green in his hair and a graze on his cheek. She’s fascinated, curious, horrified, and confused: She has seen him bleed red since the accident.  _ But in human form,  _ Jazz reminds herself.

She has a lot to learn. She always has. 

Danny sighed. “Nasty run-in with Skulker on patrol. I hate when he uses a blade.”

“Ghost X? He used a  _ knife  _ on you?!?” 

“Hey, he’s got to get my pelt somehow! And it’s  _ Skulker,  _ Jazz. ‘The Ghost Zone’s Greatest Hunter.’” He drew quotation marks with his soot-covered fingers. 

Danny was completely casual about almost being  _ stabbed.  _ He was  _ fourteen years old! _

For once, Jazz has no words. “Are… are you okay, at least?”

“This’ll need stitches, but I’m still half-alive, aren’t I?” Danny smiles at his joke. 

_ Coping mechanism,  _ notes Dr. Jasmine.  _ He’s disassociating _

Jazz’s mouth moves without her consent. “I can do it.”

Danny stares. “ _ You?  _ Stitches?  _ Blood?  _ I can do it myself, don’t worry about it.”

This time, she is firm. “No. I’m doing it. Sit down.” 

Danny plops on his bed in a huff, the ectoplasm covering his jumpsuit smears on his space-themed duvet. Using it a canvas, he draws a green lightning bolt with the plasma. Jazz looks for a needle and a thread. He’s got to have something somewhere, or he wouldn’t have made it this long.

“Where’s--”

“--Under the bed.”

She retrieves a deluxe first aid kit from under his swinging legs. It is covered in green and red stains, a Christmas parody. It’s huge. She wondered who bought it for him, as she doubts that Danny would be willing to admit that he wasn’t invincible. ( _ It should have been her.) _

“So are you going to tell me about why you look like you’ve been electrocuted?” Jazz probes carefully.

A sheepish smile from Danny. “I met Vortex on the way back home?”

She stares at him incredulously. “You have a death wish.”

“Can’t die twice.”

At that, Jazz finds her facade dropping. Her approach to Danny’s secrets was hands-off: she wanted to be completely sure that her brother trusted her. But it slips out before she can think twice. “What was it like?”

Jazz mentally slaps herself for saying that, because it is at this that Danny’s smile drops. It disappears too fast, and that’s how she knows that Danny’s been posturing the whole time.

Dr. Jasmine scrawls  _ ‘Danny laughs because otherwise, he will cry’  _ on a clipboard _ .  _ She wants Danny to take an MBTI test and the Enneagram so she can understand him better.

The reason Danny whispers, the reason he tiptoes, the reason his phone is always off so his location can’t be tracked, the reason he hides his ghost files, the reason he deletes his texts. It all ties back to the Fenton gene for  _ wanting to understand him better.  _ Dr. Jasmine stands next to their parents, looking down at their son under the scalpel and white light. She studies the way he screams while Maddie and Jack harvest his organs. As Danny’s green/blue eyes widen in fear, betrayal, blood-ectoplasm smeared on his torso from where they made the first incision, Dr. Jasmine whispers:  _ We’re scientists. We want to understand.  _

“It hurt.”

Jazz hears Danny let in a sharp intake of breath. When he looks up at her for a brief second before averting his eyes, his eyes shine with something other than paranormal wrath.

Jazz wraps her arms around her little brother and in the weight of the moment, he begins to cry quietly.

Green ectoplasm stains her clothes and hair. She hopes that if Danny clings to her tight enough she can take the weight of the world off his back.

Two white rings of light separate and reveal the child behind the hero.

“It hurt s-so much, Jazz.”

She runs her fingers through his hair, hushing him (god forbid their parents hear him and stumble upon the scene.) Her shoulder is wet.

Jazz is aware of his enemies. One lived in Wisconsin, most in the Ghost Zone. One wears his face. Two were a floor below them.

As she muffles the sound of his cries to avoid waking the sleeping dragons, she thinks of how she would kill anyone who dared cross Danny. Even if… 

_ ...even if they were family. _

_ After all _ , she thinks darkly, looking at Danny’s mangled arm and the residue on her own hands,  _ Ectoplasm is thicker than blood. _

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> "I'm 23, and my folks are getting old  
I know they don't have forever and I'm scared to be alone  
So I'm thankful for my sister, even though sometimes we fight  
When high school wasn't easy, she's the reason I survived  
I know she'd never leave me and I hate to see her cry  
So I wrote this verse to tell her that I'm always by her side  
I wrote this verse to tell her that I'm always by her side  
I wrote this verse to tell her that  
The world's not perfect, but it's not that bad  
If we got each other, and that's all we have  
I will be your brother, and I'll hold your hand  
You should know I'll be there for you  
When the world's not perfect  
When the world's not kind  
If we have each other then we'll both be fine  
I will be your brother, and I'll hold your hand  
You should know I'll be there for you  
You should know I'll be there for you"
> 
> -Alec Benjamin, If We Have Each Other


End file.
